Vail Daily letter: End is nigh; bet you a buck

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You simply must see U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's farewell address to the people, a farewell from the high priest of freedom and liberty, and tyranny's most feared enemy. It is incomprehensible to me how Paul's message was suppressed to the point that we have four more years of pedal-to-metal, straight-lining to the financial cliff.

I once pulled out a $100 Federal Reserve bank note and laid it down on the bar next to a $1 bill. I asked the good ol' boy next to me why one was more valuable than the other. All he could tell me was "because it is." But my question had a deep impact on the bubba. I thought he was going to blow a head gasket thinking about it. He got visibly angry when it finally hit him that there was no difference except for the picture printed on it. The revelation hit him so hard that he got up and walked away, leaving left his beer half-finished. Bubbas are not known for wasting beer.

But our money was not always nearly worthless.

Once upon a time, the paper note was nothing more than a receipt for the actual money - gold or silver. A $100 bill was redeemable for 100 times the gold of a single note. Now it's redeemable for nothing. That makes it worthless paper.

Believing paper has any actual value is like a religion: belief in the untouchable, unseeable and unknowable. There's nothing wrong with religion, but once people lose their money religion and pictures of presidents and digits on a screen have value, the game is over.

When the big crash comes, and it will come eventually, the U.S. economy will be like a game of pinball when you reach the tilt. What happens when you reach tilt in pinball? All activity comes to an abrupt halt.

The warning signs of the coming collapse are many and easy to see if you look. I have a friend in California that once plowed snow on back roads for the California Highway Department. For his last paycheck, in 2009, they gave him an IOU. As far as I know, he never did get paid, and that was more than three years ago.

As a child, I knew something was wrong when we started seeing copper on the edge of quarters and dimes, and the price of a candy bar doubled almost overnight in 1971.

Dimes and quarters, until 1965, were made of 90 percent silver. They had a tangible and intrinsic value. That's why you should always check your change for copperless edges. They are worth far more than face value now.

When I was 8 years old, my friends and I took notice of the copper edge on new dimes and quarters. We knew they weren't as good as the old ones. If third-graders in the '60s could see the swindle in our money system, how could so many adults even today still not see the immense problem of effortless money creation from debt and out of thin air? That's why they call it legal tender, because it's not real money.